Social engineering makes everyone hate me

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King
Joined
Mar 12, 2008
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It seems the best choices early on are demo, planned and knowledge as it gives you the best bonuses with the least drawbacks.

But this pretty much makes every faction hate me.

Any ideas? I just can't see why you would want to use social policies like fundamentalist, as they are pretty crippling (unless you are warring with someone else).
 
no matter what your political structure is, there's at least always 1 faction who's going to hate you for your choice. And in the end, they're allways going to backstab you (with Deirdre being the sole exception, if you've been friends with her the whole game long).
 
If you play with believers, spartans and hive, I don't think it is possible to avoid war if you share borders. Generally wars are almost unavoidable, and if you start next to Miriam, you better be building some rovers, probe teams and perimeter defenses.

Planned is a great choice early on. When you dont produce much energy the -2 eff have almost no effect. Planned + democracy gives crazy growth and paired with a childrens creche: Pop-boom. Knowledge is in most cases a no-brainer. Going green when your empire starts to get big is a good idea. The difference between 0 eff from planned + demo and 4 eff from demo + green is massive, and it allows you to more than 50% income to tech without any negative effects.
Once you get tree farms and hybrid forests online, you can switch back to planned for some pop-booming.
 
It just seems odd there are so few "viable" social engineerng choices. There's pretty much no reason to go police state unless you are yang for example, unles you are doing a aggressive early game where you are trying to use support to kill off the enemy instead of growing your bases.

It gets even more imblanced when you consider base facilities and secret projects. Most factions can get +3 police just with brood pits and ascetic virtues and support becomes irrelevant once you get access to clean reactors.
 
Democracy is a no-brainer in most cases. For hive police state is the obvious choice, and for believers fundementalism can work quite nice in war time.

For economic models all three are viable and have their uses. On larger maps green is the way to go with planned economy thrown in for occasionally pop-booms. The negative effects of free market is quite severe, however the +2 economy is just awesome. In many cases will you gain faster tech/more money with free market compared to green.

Power have somewhat limited used imo. Morale is nice, but the -2 industry hurts! The morale bonus + command center + bioenhancement center = elite units, which is quite nice. Knowledge is a no-brainer in most cases, but wealth can be nice, especially as Morgan running green + wealth for the +2 economy total (+1 energy for all squares).
 
I find + morale to be pretty overrated since in the long run you can just give a unit the trained speial ability to get elite units right off the bat. Unless you are gaians or something and need the boost.
 
I find + morale to be pretty overrated since in the long run you can just give a unit the trained speial ability to get elite units right off the bat. Unless you are gaians or something and need the boost.

The "Trained" special ability increases the mineral cost by quite a bit, especially for something the unit eventually will get. It also takes up a special ability slot.
 
no matter what your political structure is, there's at least always 1 faction who's going to hate you for your choice.

^^This! As I see it, Alpha Centauri is relatively balanced when using stock faction profiles, and the factions are based on the social engineering options.

Pravin Lal and his peacekeepers are bland and uninteresting, perfect for diplomats, but other than that, every faction already has their own advantages and disadvantages built right into the social engineering. Deirdre = Green, Zakharov = Knowledge, Morgan = Free Market, Yang = Police, Miriam = Fundamentalist, etc. Which means that if your really want, you can double up on your factions's strengths (and weaknesses)

Don't worry about your social engineering's effects on anyone but your neighbors, and even then, if they want vendetta, make them see the error of their ways.

So, when I play Zakharov (my favorite) and I select "Knowledge" (after getting the Hunter-Seeker Algo) I have +4 Research and -4 probe teams (but the H-S Algo kills them)

Interestingly, the other factions "hating" me in that scenario only seem to really mean that they send a lot of probe teams at me. The AI does not seem to be able to recognize both -4 probe on socialeng and H-S Algo simultaneously, which means that I get to kill a lot of their Probe teams. (Especially Yang's)

--The FNP
 
It seems the best choices early on are demo, planned and knowledge as it gives you the best bonuses with the least drawbacks.

But this pretty much makes every faction hate me.

Any ideas? I just can't see why you would want to use social policies like fundamentalist, as they are pretty crippling (unless you are warring with someone else).

For what it's worth, Planned is only viable in the extremely early game, and is definitely not viable by the time you've researched Cyberethics (for Knowledge). Sole exceptions are for the Gaians, who can't use Free Market and can use Planned a little longer because of their Efficiency bonus (but they may want to max out their Planet score early on to pursue a mindworms strategy) and the Hive, who are immune to the efficiency penalty and only get a net +1 Econ from Free Market and therefore can't take full advantage of it until they unlock Wealth. Free Market is much, much better than Planned in the early game, though it requires some thought to use properly.

Generally, Democracy/Free Market/Wealth is the best set of options early on, switching to Democracy/Green/Wealth later, as your empire gets large and you need to fight vendettas. Only disadvantage of Wealth over Knowledge is that no one favors Wealth (so you get negatives from the University and Spartans and no positive from anyone), but Wealth is nearly always better than Knowledge, and often gives you a faster tech rate, and is obviously better than Power.

Of the late-game social advances, Eudaimonic is clearly superior, though the other two are reasonably viable if you build the Secret Project that negates their penalty (the Network Backbone for Cybernetic, the Cloning Vats for Thought Control).
 
For what it's worth, Planned is only viable in the extremely early game, and is definitely not viable by the time you've researched Cyberethics (for Knowledge). Sole exceptions are for the Gaians, who can't use Free Market and can use Planned a little longer because of their Efficiency bonus (but they may want to max out their Planet score early on to pursue a mindworms strategy) and the Hive, who are immune to the efficiency penalty and only get a net +1 Econ from Free Market and therefore can't take full advantage of it until they unlock Wealth. Free Market is much, much better than Planned in the early game, though it requires some thought to use properly.

Generally, Democracy/Free Market/Wealth is the best set of options early on, switching to Democracy/Green/Wealth later, as your empire gets large and you need to fight vendettas. Only disadvantage of Wealth over Knowledge is that no one favors Wealth (so you get negatives from the University and Spartans and no positive from anyone), but Wealth is nearly always better than Knowledge, and often gives you a faster tech rate, and is obviously better than Power.

Of the late-game social advances, Eudaimonic is clearly superior, though the other two are reasonably viable if you build the Secret Project that negates their penalty (the Network Backbone for Cybernetic, the Cloning Vats for Thought Control).

I find knowledge better than wealth in almost every scenario. The big step for the "economy" modifier is from 1 -> 2, which add 1 energy for every square. For a large sprawling empire, the efficiency from knowledge is important and the +2 research is just awesome.

Planned economy is used for pop-booming and I usually use it quite a bit until I get cloning vats. Popbooming once hab complexes or forest farms/hybrid forests are online is really powerful.

Cybernetic (usually) comes much earlier than edudaimonic. Network backbone makes it an excelent choice. The +2 planet comes in handy when the manifold harmonics gets online. It is also worth noting for the super-late game that "economy" does not increase the energy production from fungus.
 
I find knowledge better than wealth in almost every scenario. The big step for the "economy" modifier is from 1 -> 2, which add 1 energy for every square. For a large sprawling empire, the efficiency from knowledge is important and the +2 research is just awesome.

Planned economy is used for pop-booming and I usually use it quite a bit until I get cloning vats. Popbooming once hab complexes or forest farms/hybrid forests are online is really powerful.

Cybernetic (usually) comes much earlier than edudaimonic. Network backbone makes it an excelent choice. The +2 planet comes in handy when the manifold harmonics gets online. It is also worth noting for the super-late game that "economy" does not increase the energy production from fungus.

If you get a Golden Age + Wealth, each city will get +1 energy per tile. They're closer to even if you can't realistically get most of your cities into Golden Age (say, if you're the University).

I've always found pop-booming overrated. But I'm clearly nearly alone in that opinion.
 
If you get a Golden Age + Wealth, each city will get +1 energy per tile. They're closer to even if you can't realistically get most of your cities into Golden Age (say, if you're the University).

I've always found pop-booming overrated. But I'm clearly nearly alone in that opinion.

I didnt know that golden age gave +1 economy, which makes wealth better for most factions (except morgan), however golden ages can be hard to come by on higher difficulties (Peacekeepers might be the only exception).
 
They're not that hard to come by, you just have to abuse crawlers, which you should be doing anyway.
 
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